"X" Puzzle - 3 times a charm

First, I would like to thank Ugoboy’s puzzle, and KnotCurser’s puzzle as this is what mine is based on.When I first saw these I figured this should be super easy and I can bring it to my sisters Christmas dinner next Saturday for everyone to play with. Easy??? How wrong I was.Even with my drill press with fence and stop block, I still wasn’t able to drill a hole in the center of a block of wood, I couldn’t get the pins to line up no matter what. It was a complete failure.My second attempt involved many clamps, digital calipers, depth gauges, scoring knives, a crap load of prayers, and a lot of adjustments using bigger hammers.Same thing, failed, I’m going to bed.I woke up this morning and noticed that all the planets were aligned, Gemini was in the east with Sagittarius rising and the dog was asleep… Perfect, what could possibly go wrong?!?This time I decided to do it a bit differently. I took a solid piece of oak, blew the dust off my kerfmaker that I made last spring but never used, and cut out the centers of the wood. I put them together, put it on my drill press and bore a hole clean through from one end to the next.Made some new tapered pins, put them in the ends and capped them with some walnut.Now it works so nice and slick, put on some tung oil to bring out the grain and ta-da!!I hope everyone gets to enjoy it at the dinner next week-end.Thanks for looking.

Hi Bob, actually I did think of using my brass rods that I use to pivot a lid on a box, but I ended up using dowels, but it would have been slick as you say.Next time.Thanks for your help on this, by the way.

Sorry, I guess I should have explained the object of this puzzle.You can see that there are four dowels, each nested inside its own chamber.You push all the dowels flush with the chambers and assemble the two pieces.Give it a shake and one of the dowels will go through the center hole of the opposing piece, locking it in place.No matter which way you tilt the puzzle, at least one dowel will be inserted in the hole, holding them together.The object of the puzzle, is to take the two pieces apart.